THE CONTRACT FROM HELL

INTRODUCTION

The Construction Industry still has a reputation for larger organisations heavily amending standard forms of contract to transfer risk further down the supply chain. Unfortunately, many companies unwittingly enter into such contracts in order to secure vital work and turnover without doing any due diligence or reviews. Quite often, many organisations do not have the commercial or legal resource to conduct these reviews. This workshop is devised to draw attention to those  typical provisions that could be detrimental to your business and how best to negotiate them to reduce your risk exposure.

COURSE CONTENT

This session will cover the following type of contractual amendments and provisions:

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• Notices by email (form, timing and method of delivery)

• Indemnity clauses including compliance with third party agreements (the effect of indemnity clauses and how to deal with obligations to comply with other agreements)

• Responsibility for discrepancies and ambiguities (responsibility for errors and discrepancies in or between documents that you have not prepared)

• Design responsibility and Design Liability (fit for purpose obligations and obligations to achieve a specified design life)

• Variations (restrictive definition of a variation and obligations to notify variations as a condition precedent to payment)

• Rights to omit work and redistribute to others (provision permitting omissions of part or all of the work and right to instruct others to carry out such work)

• Payment terms (payment periods, due dates, final dates for payment)

• Due date for retention release (final retention release dates being lengthy periods after completion)

• Notice provisions for delay and loss and expense (onerous and impractical notice periods)

• Right to deduct and set off from due payments (set off provisions, including cross contract set off)

• Property in materials delivered to site (ownership of materials transferring on delivery rather when payment is made)

• Damages for non-completion (uncapped losses including passing down damages from the main contract)

• Responsibility for ground and  physical conditions (all risk clauses with full responsibility for ground and physical conditions, whether foreseeable or not)

• Suitability of surfaces (obligation to ensure all surfaces being fixed are adequate and suitable prior to your work commencing)

LEARNING OUTCOMES

All attendees will be able to carry out reviews of your proposed contracts and identify those provisions that pose an unreasonable risk for your business. They will also acquire the knowledge and skills to understand the consequences of accepting a provision and how to successfully negotiate them to align with your company risk profile

DURATION OF WORKSHOP

Half Day or Full Day